Item 01: Oliver Hogue letters, November 1914-29 December 1915 - Page 119
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[Page 119]
Ye Gallipoli Dugout - Any ole time
[About 20-5-15]
My dear old Dad & Mum & all the rest.
The best news is that I have been under shrapnel fire for 13 hours on end & have not got a scratch so far. I have been wonderfully lucky. I directed our disembarkation and the Germans shelled the beach for 3 hours. Shrapnel bullets whizzed everywhere. I'm sick of the sight of dead soldiers & wounded. Australia has written her name in letters of blood across Gallipoli Peninsular. But the Turks are terribly feared of the Australians.
By some bad luck Brigade Head quarters had to bivouac in the most dangerous spot in the whole area. The ground was littered with shrapnel bullets when I got there. The Turks or Germans have a battery that we cant locate and it started to pump shells onto us. We were just behind some of our cannon and evidently they had been trying to silence our guns. But the result was highly interesting for us. My batman was wounded while he was digging my dug out. One of my troopers was shot in the head (not very seriously) a minute later another was hit on the [boot?] with a bullet. I stood on a spot where a sniper half a minute before had wounded one of our chaps very badly. A tree near me was riddled